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“Poor little witch,” Gary said sympathetically. “You have to wear the gorgeous dress and go flirt with the hot men. How will you survive this latest tragedy?”

But Meredith still stared in the mirror, and she noticed something about her eyes.

Are those wrinkles? Impossible, yet as she watched, they seemed to spiderweb their way out from the corners of her eyes like a rash spreading.

At the same time, her hair, so dark and lush moments before, went a bit wiry, white strands filtering through the mass of curls like confetti thrown on an abandoned party room floor.

Cheeks that, moments before, arched high instead hollowed out, veins becoming visible through her skin as it thinned with lost collagen as she aged in the glass.

Her hands shook as she placed the wrinkled and gnarled things against the soft, yet fragile, wrinkles of her face. “Uh, Gary,” she managed.

Then the glass cracked, the old woman emerging from the mirror to scream in Meredith’s face. She screamed back, the black-eyed creature and her still screaming at one another when Jeremiah busted down the door and erupted into the room.

Then it flew through her, ice stealing her breath for a second as she stood there gasping. In the broken shards remaining of the mirror, splinters of her normal face reflected back at her, shocked gaze, blinking in horror.

“Ghost?” asked Jeremiah.

“That one scared the shit out of me,” Meredith muttered, still gasping for air and clutching her chest. “If we weren’t making so much money off them, I would say we should figure out how to get rid of them.”

“We could get rid of them?” Jeremiah asked, following her from the bathroom as she began to unsteadily make her way down the hall toward the back door. “You know, I honestly never even considered that an option before.”

“I’m sure we could,” Meredith said, opening the back door and stepping onto the porch—another of their wins, insofar as no debris filled the sunroom or mudroom, whichever they chose to call it, anymore either. “There has to be a way, right? Especially if the house is a ghost trap.”

“We should talk about this more,” he began, so she paused and turned back to him. “But I wanted to catch you for a minute alone before your date.”

“Yeah? What’s up?” she asked, as Gary twined around her ankles.

“Just this,” he said, then he dragged her close to slant his lips across hers.

Fire ignited in her veins, her hands automatically clutching at his shoulders as he blasted through her defenses and heated her bloodstream.

When he came up for air, he added, “I wanted to make sure you still thought about me tonight, too, despite the date with Bodie.”

She still gripped him, not sure she could stand on her own while her senses still exploded in response.

“Can’t forget you,” she joked, but it wasn’t a joke, not really, and she figured they both knew it.

She didn’t know how it would work out, or how she could even juggle the idea of the two men, only that she wanted them both.

“Time for your date,” he said, taking her arm to escort her to the back yard. “Now, while your cheeks are still flushed and your eyes look drunk with wanting me.”

“Pissing on a tree?” she asked, feeling like something a dog marked.

“No, reminding you that he’s not the only one who wants you. Maybe reminding him, too,” Jeremiah said as Carmen ducked toward them with the camera.

“You look gorgeous!” Carmen enthused. “I wish you could pull up the comments on your phone in real time. People love that dress on you.”

“You guys picked it,” she pointed out.

“You ready?” asked Bodie, and for the first time, she looked at him.

Her breath sucked in despite her intentions to keep her face neutral. They dressed him up, too, the first few buttons left undone on his dress shirt and the sleeves rolled up to give him a casual air. Despite that, the cut of the fabric and the way it clung to his pecs?—

The bulge . Her eyes shot back up automatically after she caught a glimpse of it past his dress pants, heat flooding her cheeks. Despite her best intentions, her gaze shot down again, as if she needed to verify what she saw in the first place, but there it was, a beast.

“Hi,” she managed, her throat suddenly fully dry.

Bodie stepped closer, his scent somehow dominating her spell insofar as she could pick up on the spicy masculinity of him. His warmth practically pulsed into her, like a heartbeat or a light tempting a moth to their demise. “You look hot,” he said.

She swallowed again before gesturing from his head to toes, her eyes again wandering to the bulge. “You… you! ” she managed.

He stepped closer, one arm slinging around her waist to pull her nose to nose against his hot body. “I’m going to take that as a compliment,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“You’ve got to do better with the comebacks, Meredith,” Carmen complained, dropping her camera to the side. “Like, I get it. You can’t see chat. That said, you’ve gotta be wittier than this.”

Embarrassment nearly made Meredith duck back into the house and out of the date entirely, but Bodie caught her arm, tugging her against his side. “You said you wanted a date, is that correct?”

“Yes!” Carmen said, flopping her arms dramatically.

“Then if she’s turning me on, is she still saying the wrong thing?”

Carmen gaped at him, slowly lifting the camera again to his face. “Say that again?” she requested sweetly.

“I said, if she’s turning me on, is she saying the wrong thing?

” But this time, he emphasized his statement by turning to sweep Meredith into the second mind blowing kiss of the last few minutes.

She would swear, she heard her last few brain cells pop and sizzle into oblivion and didn’t even mind the loss.

When he finally came up for air, he said again, “Did I mention I liked the dress?”

“I think so,” she whispered.

“Ready for dinner?” he asked.

She nodded, and he tugged her into a spin that landed her back on her feet but did nothing to stop the spinning in her head.

Her eyes kept swinging back to him, and each time she looked at him, he stared back, his interest both obvious and determined.

“I’m not sure anyone ever looked at me the way you do,” she admitted, as he opened the car door for her.

Carmen jumped in the back, but no one held the door for her.

Bodie smiled, closing the door before coming around the car and getting in the driver’s side. “I’m probably not the average guy,” he admitted. “My life experiences so far have been pretty unique.”

She leaned back in her seat, buckling the belt and happy for a chance to get to know him a little better. “I figured you wanted promotion, hence joining the contest in the first place, like the rest of us?”

“No, honestly…I probably brought a lot of publicity to the project, and I’m not saying that to be arrogant.

I started with one home improvement show and that led to a couple of different series.

When covid hit, I went online and ironically, became even bigger than before.

The bigger I got, though, the less I got to work with my hands, which was the whole reason I went into remodeling.

If I’m totally honest. I’m autistic. It’s revealed online, so likely a lot of the show’s viewers already know anyway.

Due to that, and the combination with ADHD, I like to keep busy.

I’m not saying I dislike getting more of my ideas done because I have whole teams, but I miss doing it myself.

I miss getting my hands dirty, literally, you know? ”

She wrinkled her nose. She was a witch—given the preference, she would rather not get her hands dirty whatsoever.

If she could wave her wand and make it happen, why sweat?

But she did understand the need to keep busy.

Since she wanted the same thing. “I can’t say I get you exactly, but I think we do come from very different backgrounds. ”

“Is it a dealbreaker for you?” he asked, and an edge of nerves snuck into his voice as he turned into the small-town restaurant, the only one open for dinnertime in the town nearest the house project. “You can be honest.”

“No, but I feel like I should tell you more about myself, if we’re trying to get on even ground,” she said, opening her car door once he put the car in park.

He jogged around the front of the car to meet her and offer his elbow, though again Carmen was left to fumble with her gear as she got out of the car on her own. “It only seems fair.”

“So, you aren’t internet famous,” he said, leading her to the door then holding her seat as she sat. Once she did, he positioned himself across from her and they ordered their drinks—as did Carmen, with a scowl, from her end of the table as she posed the camera to hopefully get a good shot.

“No, the opposite, really. I was raised by my grandmother in a tiny town in the West Virginia hills called Assjacket—no, don’t look it up, I know you haven’t heard of it, because only about five people live there.

” She laughed, but she couldn’t help the little twinge of homesickness when she thought of Assjacket.

“I ended up a little agoraphobic, according to my therapist, a condition not helped by my social anxiety. Since my grandma died, though—nevermind, ha. That part was silly.”

She accepted the strawberry daquiri when the waiter brought it and he took his white coconutty looking beverage before he asked, “What part was silly?”

“Oh, I just had a dumb thought cross my mind,” she admitted.

“Spill,” he demanded.

“I think since my grandma died, I’ve been looking for someone who sees the me beyond all the things I’m afraid of, if that makes sense.” Saying it out loud felt silly, and wildly vulnerable, but his hand came across the table, catching hers before he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.

When she met his gaze, he said, “I actually get that more than you realize. People see my persona, the internet character I built, but do they actually see me ? I wonder the same thing all the time.”